> Well, Zod isn't just for validating JSON. It supports validating objects that can't be represented in JSON without transformation (dates, class instances, and so on).

Thanks, this was the missing piece for me. I'd been thinking about using Zod for an old client's Node codebase, but I'd only need it to validate the shape of json objects received by http endpoints. Zod was looking like overkill, but I know it's popular so I wasn't sure what I was missing.